remarkable 2: first work session

in

Majority of first impressions have been altered: while I initially thought the remarkable would be a replacement for the Drafts app and not a journal, it's already proven to be the opposite; I'm giving it this week to replace my paper and pen journal (which, unless things drastically change and/or it decides to erase my jottings, it's already done); figured out the left-hand thing and am now a leftie writing on a leftie-oriented device with a digital Papermate Flair (I've found a setting – marker, medium, black which makes it so) and have ordered the Lamy stylus that's basically an AL-Star with a stylus nib so I can fully merge both worlds; a leather cover, not dissimilar to my journal one, is on its way. Hopefully will find a way to keep index cards, post its, and perhaps my CW&T Pen Type-C in there alongside for quick notes and jottings. Once the Lamy arrives, it'll be quite something, I think.

File system so far:

  • Journal: one notebook per week – pretty similar to what I do here – with one page per day (scrolling journal is fantastic!) and written in the same scrawl as with my 14+ years of paper journals. When the week is done, I'll transfer a PDF over to Obsidian and save it there and start a new one. Given that I've never gone back and consulted one of those journals in the 14 years of their existence, I see no reason that I'll start now: their purpose is to get the shit out of my brain. Hopefully, as I get more acclimated to creating with it, the notebook there and the notebook here will more fully merge. Biggest thing: I didn’t miss the paper journal, not once.

  • Legal Pad: so named, ruled, for when I need to draft things or think things through on the Main Things.

  • Considering adding "Whiteboard" for mindmaps, etc - though I could do that on the Legal Pad, IDK. Doubt I'll save these, as I tend to manually add to Obsidian / main project doc as I go.

  • Quick sheets for quick jottings - sticky notes section, accessible from the main doc, would be great, but that does, I suppose, go against the guiding ethos of deep work / thinking that the remarkable inculcates. A little too much friction between brain and scrap in this case.

I've neither found the typing function / typefolio to be very useful since I'm so used to speed-freak/mistake-laden huntnpeck on a Mac with my split keyboard (if I want to add typed text, I can always add it to the note via the app and move it over) nor have I tried reading or marking up PDFs, though I've a feeling that it will be a fantastic editing and revising tool.

Battery power is down from an unboxing 67% to 28% at the time of posting this - that whole purported "two week" battery life must be in a constant period of sleep – so I'll have to plug it in in a bit but that's nothing I'm not used to: I, do, after all, have to plug in my cyborg pancreas every few days so I can stay alive so I suppose I can live with plugging in my cyborg brain as needed.

Love love love.